


Diamonds are an Agent's Best Friend

by Linorien, opalescentgold



Series: 007 Fest 2017 [10]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-05 05:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11571627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linorien/pseuds/Linorien, https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalescentgold/pseuds/opalescentgold
Summary: It was a seemingly normal car crash that brought two very special women together. And the face of espionage would never be the same.





	Diamonds are an Agent's Best Friend

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: Gen backstory fic for Moneypenny or Judi Dench's M.  
> You got both.
> 
> Also, this is partly inspired by an episode of The Avengers. See if you can spot the nod.

When Eve sat down at her desk in the morning, she was puzzled by the case assignment on her desk. Upon scanning the report, it seemed to be a typical automobile accident on Kingsway. The car seemed to have gotten knocked out of control and smashed into the wall separating the road from the beach.

The other driver had come forwards so there was no need to find him. It was an accident, and he had been willing to pay for any bills, except the other driver had died. So why was it that she was being summoned to autopsy? And why was it a case given to Scotland Yard rather than the local force?

As her superior had not gotten in yet, she went down to autopsy to see if she could find answers to her questions down there.

She walked through the sliding door and immediately saw her answer. She was too shocked to properly question the doctor so a simple “How?” with a wave of her arm would have to do.

Michael looked up. “Good morning, Eve. I was wondering that myself.”

Eve walked closer to the table, hands clasped behind her back. She usually didn’t like looking closely at the bodies on the table, but this was too unusual.

“Allow me to introduce you to Steve Cartwright.” Michael picked up his clipboard from beside the man’s leg. “Thirty-five years of age, clean bill of health with the exception of some liver damage from smoking, thirteen filled cavities. Judging by the tan lines on his wrist, he probably spent a lot of time in the sun. His passport indicates he had recently travelled to Hong Kong but I see no evidence of any regional diseases. All in all, quite average.”

“Except for that.”

“Except for that.”

That, in this case, was a stomach practically exploding with diamonds. Actual, literal _diamonds_.

“How did they even get inside his stomach?” Eve asked. “Some of them look quite sharp.”

“Surgery, most likely. There was a thin scar across his stomach, but I had initially assumed something standard.” Michael lifted a piece of skin to show her. “Certainly, if that is how the diamonds were inserted, whoever did it was a well trained surgeon. It was almost painful to ruin such nice work.”

Eve rolled her eyes. “Unless that helps us narrow down who did it, I don’t care.”

“It might actually. You see, they also used a pouch with enteric coating to help prevent the body from rejecting the insertion. Now these are usually used in pills, but—” The doctor was interrupted by Eve’s pager going off obnoxiously. She always set an alarm before she came down here.

“I’m sorry,” she said unrepentantly as she tilted it to look at the non-existent message. “This looks urgent. Gotta run. Email me anything you think might be of use to the case.” Without giving Michael the chance to protest, Eve took off for the door at a steady pace.

“I know you do that on purpose, you know!” Michael called after her. “There’s only so many times that can happen coincidentally.”

“You know where to find me, Michael!” Eve threw over her shoulder and stepped into the lift.

 

Eve spent the next two days compiling all the relevant details on the case. The local force had only haphazardly thrown information their way, and their interviews were practically useless. She had to do her own research on the details of the make and model of the cars and dig through council records for the license plates.

On Friday afternoon, she got a call to visit the Lab. “What do we know?” Eve asked after the pleasantries were over.

“Do you remember seeing on telly that Mrs. Skala was offering a reward for information about the whereabouts of her diamond collection?” Christina, a pretty, brown-haired woman, inquired. Eve nodded. “Well, if it wasn’t against the guidelines of the Yard, we could collect on that today.”

“These are those diamonds? But that means these cost thousands!”

“A 50,000 pound breakfast,” another tech, Jeremy, joked.

Christina swatted him on the back to his yelp. “Here, let me show you.” She beckoned Eve over to look through the microscope. “Do you see that marking there? It’s a mark made by the person who cut the diamond. It is like a shipping label. You can trace that exact diamond based on when it was cut and who did the work. Any smart collector would have these details on record. I bet you could match this to Mrs. Skala’s collection.”

Excited, Eve hurried back to try to reach out to Mrs. Skala. She also had an angle to pursue. It was no longer a simple car crash, not that it really had been to start, but now it was a criminal case and she was rarely assigned one of those. By the end of the week, she thought she was close to getting somewhere interesting.

Maybe Monday would bring with it new discoveries.

***

After a thoroughly pleasant weekend, Eve arrived in the morning to find her supervisor waiting by her desk. Without so much as a proper greeting, he instructed her to organise her notes as the case was being transferred to MI6 immediately. The liaison - one Olivia Mansfield - would arrive in ten minutes to collect her work.

That was it. Eve wasn’t needed anymore. Thanks for everything she had done; goodbye.

It was _infuriating._ But this wasn’t the first time this had happened, and Eve was a professional. So she set her jaw and nodded, gathering her notes and taking care not to glare too obviously. Even as she strode away, however, heels clacking on the floor, she was already making her own plans.

This simply wouldn’t do. This was _her_ case. She had put in the time, put in the effort; she was going to see this to the end. She would just have to make sure she was needed. The Secret Service didn’t know how valuable she was, but she would make sure they did.

Eve situated herself in their lobby with her files and waited, legs crossed and head held high. All visitors, even MI6 visitors, came through the lobby, and sooner or later, their liaison would have to walk through those doors, and Eve would be ready for her when she came.

Or so she thought.

Precisely ten minutes later, the doors opened. Eve looked up and then had to blink several times to make sure her vision was working correctly. The woman striding into the building like she owned it, wasn’t at all what she had expected.

She was a stately woman, for all that she was quite short, and there were streaks of grey in her hair, but to underestimate this woman, Eve felt at once, was to sign your own death warrant. The regal bearing she - Olivia Mansfield, must be - wore like a cloak was as efficient as any gun, and the small crowd that regularly lingered in the lobby parted smoothly for her.

Mansfield was the most intimidating woman Eve had ever seen. Eve was fairly certain she had stars in her eyes.

When she grew up, she decided, she wanted to be Olivia Mansfield.

Olivia kept right on walking, and with a sudden jolt, Eve realised she was going to miss her chance. Hurriedly, she stood up with her files and walked forward, her path set to intersect Olivia’s before she could reach the lifts.

“Ms Mansfield!” Eve called when she was a few metres away.

Olivia stopped and turned on her heel sharply. Dark eyes instantly threatened to pin Eve to the ground, but Eve hadn’t come all this way to stop here. She walked to stand in front of Olivia and maintained eye contact stubbornly. “My name is Eve Moneypenny. I was in charge of this investigation.”

Olivia nodded curtly and took the files that were offered to her. “Hello, Miss Moneypenny.”

“You can call me Eve, Ma’am.”

Olivia hummed as she looked through the documents. “Are your male colleagues called by their first names?”

Eve shook her head.

“I thought not. Make them call you Miss Moneypenny. They’ll respect you more, and you’ll respect yourself more.”

Eve blinked. She had never thought of it like that.

Olivia started to move forward, still reading through the papers. Eve tried to read her face, see what Ms. Mansfield thought of her work, but she could only see that the older woman was concentrating. She didn’t say anything more until she walked into the DI Crawford’s office.

Crawford stood up to greet her. “Good morning, Ms Mansfield. I see you have already gotten the paperwork. I am assigning you one of my agents to help assist you since your superior said that our lab technicians would be continuing with the case.” He nodded and another officer at the Yard stepped forward.

Eve fought not to groan. Anyone but Craig Eggen. He glanced her way and smirked very slightly, but a smirk nonetheless. He was always throwing standard paperwork on her desk and making her type it up, or file it, or whatever else came up that he thought himself above doing. She hadn’t expected to be mentioned in the final report Ms Mansfield gave to MI6 but with Eggen on the case it was an impossibility.

“Actually, I have already selected one of your agents to work with me,” Ms Mansfield spoke up without looking up from the papers she was still reading. “Miss Moneypenny began working on this case, and it would make the most sense for her to continue. She is the most informed.”

“Really? I’m sure Mr. Eggen would be able to catch up on all of Eve’s work in no time.”

Now that it had been pointed out to her, Moneypenny did see how her superior called her by her first name despite affording more respect to others.

Ms. Mansfield looked up and stared down the DI. There was no mistaking the cold fire in her eyes. “Miss Moneypenny,” she said, putting emphasis on the name, “will be the best choice. It would be foolish to assume otherwise when she has done excellent work so far.” He had nothing to say to that. “As that is settled, I see no reason to waste anymore time so we will get started. Miss Moneypenny, can you please lead me to the labs?”

***

Although the case was serious, both women enjoyed themselves immensely. There was something bolstering about working with competent women and learning from each other.

Together, they learned that this was not just a case of stolen diamonds. Mrs Skala had confirmed that these were her diamonds, and she completely understood that there would be some delay in returning them since they were evidence in a crime. The interviews they conducted with witnesses all pointed to this being a true accident, nothing suspicious at all.

But it was the victim’s phone that proved most interesting. As a rule, during investigations,, the Lab charged it up and left it on. When the lab techs came in Tuesday morning, there was a new message on it. Christina called for Ms Mansfield to come down as soon as she arrived.

“Thank you for waiting,” Mansfield said when they arrived in the basement.

“We figured you would want to hear it just in case something goes wrong and it deletes as soon as it’s,” Christina said, plugging the phone into the computer.

“Hi Steve, this is your doctor,” the voicemail began. “You were scheduled for an appointment on Thursday, and you never showed. I just wanted to check in on you. Why don’t we meet for lunch at Dyke Road Park later today? My treat. See you there.”

“I’m guessing that is as much a doctor as I am a juggler,” Moneypenny joked.

“Quite,” Mansfield agreed. “But now we know that there is definitely more to this than a simple robbery. This could quite possibly lead us to the rest of the smuggling chain.”

 

And so it was that at noon, Ms Mansfield and Miss Moneypenny were hiding in the trees of Dyke Road Park with binoculars scanning the open area before them. Agent Kelmar from MI6 was currently sitting at a picnic table, dressed like Steve Cartwright had been when he’d died, the exception being an earpiece in his ear connected to a thin wire running down to a radio pack. Moneypenny had been impressed by how well makeup managed to hide the wires, but Mansfield was harder to please.

She growled at the agent to once again stop touching his ear and focus on acting normal. He once again assured her that he knew what he was doing. Mansfield wished she could’ve selected another agent to assist, but unfortunately he matched the physical features of the victim most closely.

Finally, at half past, another man entered the park and walked directly to Agent Kelmar.

“Approaching from your four,” Mansfield warned. “Remember, you are to act compliant.”

The agent grunted in acknowledgement. Trusting him to keep watch on the approaching suspect, Mansfield returned to scanning the rest of the park for other suspicious individuals. Typically, one did not show up alone to these sorts of meets.

She heard faint talking from the other man and only short acknowledgements from the other agent. She wished the microphone was better, but that was one thing she had no control over and a stern look would do no good.

“Possible suspicious car over here,” Moneypenny reported. “Driver is intently watching the meeting.”

“Keep an eye on it.” Mansfield continued scanning, noting the rise in volume of the agent’s voice, but not focusing on the words. Only then she heard the unmistakeable sounds of a fight breaking out. Snapping her attention back to the park bench she was astonished to see both men wrestling on the ground. Agent Kelmar had handcuffs in one hand and appeared to be attempting an arrest. “Agent!” she barked. “What are you doing?”

“The driver is speeding away!” Moneypenny said over whatever excuse Kelmar was attempting to use. “I’m going after him.”

Trusting that the younger woman from Scotland Yard was a competent driver, Mansfield hurried over to rescue Kelmar from the fight and arrest the man herself. She was hesitant, but she intrusted their prisoner to Agent Kelmar with instructions to bring him to a secure holding room at MI6. Then she hurried to her own car to follow the other agent, asking for her current address as soon as she switched to the more long range radio.

 

“Yes, it looks like they are entering the second flat,” Moneypenny confirmed over the radio. She was sitting three blocks down from where the driver had stopped and entered a townhouse. Through her binoculars, she saw him shut the door and then watched a series of lights turn on. It was curious that the base of the operation, if that was what this was, was so close to London proper when the person had arranged to meet Steve in Brighton.

Moneypenny faintly heard Mansfield tell her that she was on her way, but the radio really wasn’t perfect. Someone else came on the radio at the same time and talked over the message, which didn’t really help. Instead of potentially losing suspect, she decided to go inside and investigate herself.

She didn’t hear voices inside. That could either mean the driver was alone, or those inside were waiting for her. Moneypenny hoped it was the former. She loosened her baton from it’s holster. The stairs were old and creaked despite her best attempts to stay away from the centre of the step where the noise was greatest.

The wallpaper was peeling and the lighting was poor; she could hardly believe this ramshackle interior belonged to the bright pastel stucco exterior. She suspected the landowners had not been inside, merely content to collect the rent. A crash upstairs made her freeze on the stairs, but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from so she continued.

Reaching the door she suspected was the one the driver had entered, she politely knocked, going for the subtle route rather than barging right in. Surprisingly, there was an answer.

A gruff male voice through the door asked what she wanted.

“There was an incident with your neighbor’s pipe,” she responded, thinking fast on her feet. “Harmful mold. I was sent to check that it hasn’t spread to your system as well. Won’t take more than two minutes.”

He grumbled, muttering about how this day was not going well, but she could hear him unlocking the door. At least three locks, which she knew was not standard. This had to be the right place.

As soon as she heard the sound of the doorknob turning, Moneypenny threw her shoulder against the door, _hard_ , and burst in, effectively knocking the man inside backwards. A bald white male in his forties stumbled as he fell to the floor. Before he could recover, she quickly slipped her cuffs off her belt and snapped them around his wrists.

“Sir,” she said, “you’re under arrest.”

***

When Olivia Mansfield had been assigned to this case, she’d feared she would be working with the usual crowd: snobbish chaps at the Yard who thought they were better than any woman, even if that woman was an MI6 field agent. She had also worked plenty of cases where the in-house officer would withhold information and intelligence to make her seem inept.

She had been delighted to find that this case would be different. From the moment Miss Moneypenny had intercepted her on her way to the lifts, she could tell that this young woman was a kindred spirit. She didn’t back down, and she was willing to mind the details needed to form an airtight case.

Clever, assertive, and driven was a rare and precious combination of traits; Mansfield had made sure to promptly capitalise on it before that simpering DI could take Moneypenny away, probably for a desk job any idiot could do. No, that would have been a waste.

Her decision had proven true when Moneypenny kept up with her - not easy for anyone - and provided insightful contributions of her own. Hence, although the decision was against protocol, Mansfield couldn’t help but be a little proud of Moneypenny for taking the initiative to pursue the driver.

It was what she would’ve done herself after all.

And when she walked through the door of the flat, she honestly was not terribly surprised to find Miss Moneypenny standing before a man who was handcuffed and bound to his own chair, already with tears in his eyes. It was clear that he was not going to be heard to break. “There are two other links in the chain and this talker can give us everything we need to find them.” Not hard at all.

As they interrogated the man together, waiting for the backup to arrive, Mansfield decided that she would be leaving an MI6 application on Miss Moneypenny’s desk. Talent this rare ought not be wasted.


End file.
